


we are time and time eternal

by ten_and_a_rose



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post Episode: s02e09 The Satan Pit, Romance, Telepathic Bond, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-15
Updated: 2016-04-22
Packaged: 2018-04-03 14:56:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4105054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ten_and_a_rose/pseuds/ten_and_a_rose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Promising <i>forever</i> means more than either of them could have imagined...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the end

**Author's Note:**

> This was the first fic I began in this fandom, and I've become unhappy with it as time has worn on and it's gone unfinished.  
> However, the story has grown and taken on a life of its own, and I'm NOT abandoning it! I've deleted the second and third chapters and slightly edited the first one. I'm in the process of re-writing, and I will be posting a rewritten second chapter very shortly. And I'll continue on from there!  
> THANK YOU to everyone who has encouraged me to finish this! Also, huge thanks to mountaingirlheidi ([goingtothetardis](goingtothetardis.tumblr.com)) for initial beta-reading and advice. This is now unbeta'd, so any mistakes are solely my own.  
> ~~~  
> ON THIS CHAPTER: As you may guess, this story is being told mostly in flashbacks. Beginning in the middle - yes, that's very me.  
> * There are Bad Things ahead, but all is not always as it seems...  
> * Rating will likely go up for one or more reasons...  
> * I've made the decision to spell TARDIS as "Tardis," so as not to read as if it's being SHOUTED. Maybe it's just me... :)  
> ~~~

The blue box listed curiously, drifting and spinning in lazy erratic aimlessness.  The doors usually so well sealed swayed peculiarly on what was left of their hinges, creating sporadic bursts of sound and swinging fitfully open when the box dipped one way, slamming closed as it heaved the other, rocking open again as it wobbled back, whacking shut again, then open, then shut

_open shut open shut open shut thud thud, un deux trois lost count lost count lost – lost –_

Inside on the ramp he was still crouched where he’d last fallen, facing the doorway, slender pinstriped legs crooked at the knees at two odd angles, hands flattened down between them and splayed out with long fingers curled around the metal to support his weight at an awkward forward lean from the balls of his battered trainers.  His head hung down, eyes screwed shut as if braced against an onslaught.

_pink rose purple rose red rose red red rose thorns blood red blood –_

_Bang!_    There was a sudden lurch as the Tardis shuddered and the left door smashed violently closed then crashed beyond and out, bending back at an unnatural angle like a broken elbow and connecting hard with the outside of the box.  He did not flinch, did not even twitch as the last hinge finally gave and the door pulled free and tore away from its home with an earsplitting _crack_ then paradoxically, freed from the contained safety of its body, simply slipped lazily away into the nothing and disappeared, all the cohesion drained from even its subatomic bonds.

_oh – that’s not –_

His head snapped up with a jolt as if he’d just heard the noise, as if he were a half-second out of sync, and his eyes flew open.  They were massive cataclysmic orbs, pupil blown out wide and vast and obliterating iris until there was only black.  Nothing else moved as he stared sightless and slack jawed beyond the entrance where the door had been.

Mournfully, the Tardis tried to press at the edges of his consciousness, to touch his thoughts, but the only song she could muster was barely song at all in faint disconsolate muted brown and grey. The strain of holding herself together was exhausting her and she was too weak and she could not reach him.  She was not dying exactly, his stolen ship, his sturdy old girl, but she was wounded, hurt so badly and in such a way that she could never possibly recover.

And he.

_tomorrow yesterday_ _where is the timeline – wait – rose help me I’ve got it all muddled up_

He was as unhinged as the door.

Confusion seeped into his bones like some exotic poison, burrowing deeper the more he struggled.  Fear rose quickly when the absence of arrhythmic banging brought a strange suffocating silence in its wake, both claustrophobic and sepulchral, ineffably huge.  Instinctively his mind bowed out, reaching grasping _clutching straining searching_ – for her pink and yellow colours, the musicthought of his ship, the strands of Time, then anything, _anything_

_now then_ _it’s so quiet before after i’m blind rose!… rose?_

Panic overtook him and he lost his balance and fell forward onto his elbows, then pushed back with an unconscious grunt and landed solidly on his posterior.  The bizarre sensation of having the wind knocked out of him made him heave in startled rasping bursts of air.  He tried, tried to think but it was like swimming in thick unyielding mud.  He wrestled with vision that would not focus, lifted up his hands and fought to make sense of the watery picture of his own palms before his face, of limbs that didn’t quite feel properly attached.  There was a word, maybe it had gone wrong, what was that _word?_

_change did i change did i_

He felt an abrupt surge of neurotransmitters as some of his autonomic defences began to come back online.  They calmed him a bit, easing the wild terror and frantic pace of his hearts as his body worked on autopilot to keep him out of overload.  His breathing became easier and the murk of his thoughts cleared slightly, just enough for the nothing in his mind, the quiet, the _entropy_ to push itself one notch closer to his understanding.  There was some cavernous emptiness there, emptiness and phantom pain like a missing limb.

_rose where is now?_

Everything was _off_ somehow and he was burning up, all cracked lips and sparks, barren desert flames racing through a Time Lord brain that had malfunctioned, short-circuited, imploded.  He could not find the centre of things that would ground him but he knew that _once he had known_ , _known_ _where is now_ , and it had been the all-consuming all that mattered.

_my rose my rose my red rose_

Rose.  He could never forget that the single syllable had a meaning, was not nonsense in his head.

Rose – Rose was – Rose was now.  Rose was _now_ and _here_ and _his_ and _everything_. Her face _her beautiful face_ flashed across his vision, the whole of the multiverse compressed into one human life evanescent and delicate with a single heart and shining eyes. 

But she was not there, not there and he was alone, completely alone without even the distant ebullient babble of Time for companionship.  The silence was _different,_ unlike any he’d ever experienced, ever thought possible at all.  It was _total_ , complete in its vacuous absence.  _Maddening._   Was that it? Had he finally just gone mad?  But –  no –

_can’t remember – rose – why…rose I’ve a very bad feeling…_

Suddenly it was so near, looming huge and close, fading smoke acrid and bitter in the back of his throat.  He had been mad, yes, but oh that feeling, that familiar stone fist clenched in the pit of his stomach was there and dread began to rise because he knew, he knew it was more than that.  He tasted it now, smelled it darkly curling round his nostrils – something horrific had happened, and he began to suspect he had done… something… _something_ … Panic stabbed at him again and he fought for the control to make sense of it.

_need you need you can’t feel i’m afraid you’re gone and there is no now_

It began.

Nature abhors a vacuum and with horror he felt its arrival, this _thing_ , a single glowering ember in the midst of the nothing inside him.  It was sound, the most bleak sound, that became a distant scream as it began to grow.  At first he felt it like an echo but it was spurred on by its own energy, expanding in a feedback loop and multiplying savage and unrelenting until there were so many voices that all he heard was primordial shrieking, and still it was escalating, building to eclipse all else in his psyche. It was the chaotic keening of raw wild bedlam and as it drew closer still, louder still, it coalesced into a single all-encompassing universal voice that became a tangible thing as the wave of it began to rise over him, an obsidian wave of rage and desperation and cold naked agony.

It was the mad and endless howl of a lone and utterly desolate Wolf.  The last of her kind.

It grew into a crashing deafening crescendo, a tsunami that roared as it crested and tore through him with black shards of pain so intense he forgot to breathe and collapsed backwards, head slamming into the metal floor just as his respiratory bypass came back online and kicked in.

It was the blow that did it.

That was the precise second, if such a thing still existed, that the dam burst and the memories came gushing into him, and his back arched against the floor’s cold metal with a sharp, shocked gasp at the sudden rapacious undertow, pulling and clawing and dragging him down.

He sank.

He remembered.

He _relived_.  He relived and he wanted to die.


	2. the beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of Krop Tor provokes realisations and choices.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The important thing to keep in mind is that this is written as a series of the Doctor’s memories and flashbacks from his point at the end of Chapter 1. The story will ultimately converge and bring us back there. For me, this is a really canon divergent version of _their story,_ and it begins here, at the end of their ordeal on Krop Tor.  
>  ~~~

 

  ** _i. flash flood_**

_Every moment came to him at once with blistering clarity, pouring in torrents that roared through sulci and gyri, eddying in synapses, racing through the empty spaces between the subatomic particles of his existence.  He was submerged and drowning and begging for air, for release from the spectacle before him._

  _At first the memories flew at him in fragmented non-linear bits and pieces, fast so fast as he was dragged along with the vicious current, battering him like razorwire rocks in a riverbed._

_Rose –_ laughing and spinning in a vivid blur of colour as they danced together on that one magnificent night when everybody lived.

_Rose –_ glowing ethereal unending and blindingly bright, burning the whole of Time and space through her brain her eyes her fingertips, enigmatic mystic tears trailing rivulets down her face, immolating herself like a dying sun supernova.  For him.   _I want you safe – My Doctor – protected from the false god._

_Rose –_ red lights bursting starry white and toby zed and radiant fluttering wings too fast he didn’t remember that _what_ –

_Rose –_ Cardiff and Dickens and that dress and he blurted out _Blimey! You look beautiful!_

_Rose_ – confusion and grief and fear in her eyes as before them he transformed in a blaze of fire, her Doctor replaced by someone she did not know.  He should have told her; he’d frightened her; she wouldn’t stay.

_Rose –_ a gleeful reckless girl wheeling round and running, _running_ into his life with fire and gold streaking out behind her like the tail of a comet.

_Rose –_ standing there in the snow that was not snow and her eyes glittered and she took his hand again and looked at him with something like wonder, a look as brand new as he felt because _she stayed_.

_Rose_ – after Krop Tor, pushing her way breathlessly through the Tardis doors only to be caught up short at the sight of him. Words failed him as a seraphic smile spread across her features until it seemed to radiate through her entire body and she suddenly ran, just _ran_ to him.  He felt himself moving, drawn toward her with equal measure, and as she flung herself into his arms he plucked her up off her feet into an ecstatic embrace and he was so happy simply to be with her, to be _home._

 

**_ii. one step_ **

_Gradually the rapids began to slow, and the force of the current became both slower and so much more cruel as it lingered and the next memory coalesced into perfect real-time clarity.  Of course it was this one.  Of course it was._

_Rose_ – bathed in the Tardis’ blue light, she looked so pale and small and terribly young as she said it, the prophecy tumbling from her lips; “It said I was gonna die in battle.”

His world skidded to a stop, hearts skipping once, just once, before he turned to her.

“Then it lied,” he insisted, pouring every scrap of raw will he possessed into his voice.  They were words, only words, but the right words held unimaginable power, could stop galaxies from turning.  The two of them together, the Doctor and Rose – they were the stuff of legend, and legends did not die.

She smiled but it was a frail wisp of a thing that didn’t reach her eyes.

Finally he pulled the last lever and they slipped gently into the Vortex, leaving Krop Tor and its secrets far behind.  And it was as if the place itself, that baleful Bitter Pill, had held some malignant sway, because like the relaxing of a clenched fist, the immediate distance seemed to lift a shroud from Rose, from him, from everything.

The Tardis herself bubbled joyfully, so pleased to be away from there, rescued and reunited with them, that her humming became music for even the human ear, lilting and low.  Hearing it, Rose turned her head to the side with a look of wonder.  She touched the console tentatively with her open palm and the lighting shifted, dimming and bathing everything in a serene pink glow. A tiny noise of surprise escaped her throat and she grinned.  Playfully, the ship whispered back with the faint sound of bells.  Rose laughed and there was another whisper, then another, the Tardis singing to her.

_safe, my wolf pup, beautiful, safe_

Delighted, abruptly giggly and punch drunk on relief and the sheer joy of being alive and together, Rose flashed the Doctor a bright smile before she turned and began to glide in a circle around the console with graceful steps and arms outstretched as if she could see and touch the sound, hold the spidersilk vibrations in her fingers.  She moved and the ship answered, the two of them playing out an otherworldly call-response ballet.

It hit him then – Rose was dancing.  Dancing with the Tardis.

_my bravest wolf, beloved thief_

He was as astonished as he was captivated.

_beloved my rose, only ever rose_

He’d never seen his ship so very fond of anyone else, could not recall her ever singing aloud for anyone in all of their centuries together.  And  _this_  – that the Tardis would call her  _beloved_ …  This was intimate and emotional, a profound display of deep and abiding devotion between Human and Other.  He recalled her words on the Game Station -  _I looked into the Tardis, and the Tardis looked into me._   Each had seen the other and the whole of reality as though they were one.  Of course the ship would come to love her.

Rose herself had become blissfully engulfed in the moment, listening and feeling and answering with her hands and her steps and her own murmured humming.  He suspected she might even feel the meaning in the music and it almost unnerved him – yet it only added to her appeal, and a spellbound warmth bloomed soft and insistent inside him as he watched her.

But he was more than watching, wasn’t he?  He was _staring_ , cataloguing every nuance and committing the breathtaking moment to near-perfect memory.

He’d done it before.  It had become a habit, in fact, to watch her, to jealously secret away her seconds and moments to keep for himself.

It was dangerous.

And he loved it.

…He loved _her_.

It had only taken the beast itself to gift him the clarity and courage finally to accept it – to acknowledge what he already knew, to understand what it meant.

For a long time now they’d been circling each other like twin stars, never apart but not quite together, drifting in an unspoken, ineffable netherworld of _more than_ but _not exactly_ , of _what if_ and _if only_.

Because he’d been terrified.

Because he’d been an _idiot_.

Because what he’d ultimately been was _alone._ Alone, and it didn’t have to happen this way, dangling from the end of his rope in thick, inky darkness miles below anything sane.  His death seemed a foregone conclusion, no going back, and he could have, would have accepted all too easily that maybe it was time.  Except…

Rose, the _singularity_ that was Rose.  She was there on the surface and waiting, trusting, believing he somehow would find his way back to her.  He hung there and searched for something, for anything, to give her, and the epiphany unravelled before him – just how much worse than someday losing her was the immensity of his regret for allowing _if only_ to become _only_ _could have been_.  There was nothing, not for that.  He only hoped she knew.

But now – now was _now_ and he’d been given another chance at _could be_.

He’d been following her so intently with his vision that he’d turned with her to keep her in view. His thoughts wove round the sight of her to puddle at her feet in shades of colour as she came full circle and stopped. He had pivoted completely so that he was facing her, his back against the console.

Twin stars in orbit, locked in an unending _almost_ , inseparable but never complete.  He felt it like a deep fissure between his hearts.  He had tried for so long to grow accustomed to it, to block it out – but now it was unbearable.

His equilibrium had destabilised and his orbit was decaying at dizzying speed.

She came out of her reverie with a daydream smile as her eyes fell to his.  She’d seen him and he was caught – but this time he refused to look away.  For an instant surprise flickered across her features, but quickly her smile morphed and reality shifted and she was returning his intense stare with one of her own.

He was going to crash.

One step forward _just one step_ and he wasn’t sure who’d taken it because maybe it had been both of them.

Of their own volition, his hands moved up to touch her face, fingers unfolding against her skin, cradling her cheeks.  He felt the rush of speed overtake him, the impending collision, and suddenly there was so much he needed to tell her and it was all there on the tip of his tongue at once, a tangle of information he could not force into linear order.

As if she knew, her eyes fell closed and she leaned into his touch.

“Rose Tyler,” he breathed, her name for want of words.

With a jolt he felt her lips graze his palm as she slid her hands along his chest until one came to rest above each of his hearts.  When she opened her eyes to gaze up at him again they were boundless dark amber, vast and eternal, and he began to see that Krop Tor had stripped her own psyche just as raw and bare as his.  He saw galaxies there in her eyes, the beautiful mathematics of infinity, the cryptic language of forever.

Gravity gave one last great tug and he was there.

The first touch of impact was unexpectedly hesitant, almost reverent. His lips brushed hers softly, so softly it was a benediction, a thousand tiny prayers.  He drew away slightly, hovering, and was stunned at the awe in her voice as she whispered, “Kiss me again.”

Her words pulled at him like pulling poison from a wound and he felt the paradox of freedom and surrender for the first time in his very long life.

He caught her lips a second time and sunlight flared behind his eyes as she unfurled like her namesake beneath him.


	3. unbreakable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Promising _forever_ means more than either of them could have imagined.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I owe many, many thanks to [mountaingirlheidi](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mountaingirlheidi/pseuds/mountaingirlheidi) ([goingtothetardis](http://goingtothetardis.tumblr.com) on tumblr) for initial reading and beta before so much of this was rewritten. I owe HUGE HUGE thanks, all the chocolate, and at least one David Tennant clone of her very own to [Caedmon](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Caedmon/pseuds/Caedmon) ([caedmonfaith](caedmonfaith.tumblr.com) on tumblr) for beta reading and much conversating (it’s a word because I say so! ;)) and just listening to me whine.

 

After the crash comes the fire.

After the crash, twin stars burn and meld in a cosmic blossom of light and heat.

 _Light and heat_ and he was kissing her now in the way that would change everything, kissing her as a drowning man kisses the air.  Her mouth slid against his and her lips were silk, soft and warm as they parted in affirmation, inviting him in.  The welcome shattered him.  He responded, he couldn’t _not_ respond, love and want and need exchanged in a mutual quest for _yes_ and _more_ and _closer_.  With one hand round her waist and the other splaying long fingers across her back, he drew her in tight against him.  Her fingers moved upward, caressing his jaw, skimming the back of his neck, pushing through his hair.  Everywhere she touched ignited starbursts that penetrated his skin and shot his bloodstream through with flame.

He’d _danced_ before, but not in centuries.  Not in centuries and not like this, never _anything_ like this.  This was emotional-sensory fusion blinding him until there was only her, desire and life and breath and _Rose_ all tangled together in his arms.  He loved her beyond what language could contain, and finally he grasped it, that this fire was also love.  This fire, this beautiful craving – it was almost always there with her, but now he was allowing himself to _feel_ it, to _act_ on it, and yes it was love, so complete and so _human._  Fierce and alien and electric, it was drunk and passionate and half mad and _the most alive he’d_ _ever been_.

She brought him to _life_ – after all this time only existing, he was finally _alive._

_Hope trust desire love –_

He broke the kiss with a shocked gasp.

Rose.  It was _Rose_ , the barest brush against her consciousness sweeping him up and away, enfolding her around him.

It was her, and he heard it; he _felt_ it.

...It never should have happened!  Horror and embarrassment washed over him.  Instinct, it must have been sheer instinct to seek out the touch of her thoughts without her consent.

He began to release her, a rueful apology already half-formed and perching on his tongue, when –

_No!_

Her voice rang out in his head, emotions surfing the crest with it as her untrained mind called out to him.

_Understanding wonder please don’t go –_

Still holding him, fingers of one hand against the nape of his neck, she wrapped her free arm around his waist and rested her head on his chest.

Guilt stung him, and he knew she felt it.   _Rose, i’m so sorry, i would never – never without –_

She put that to rest with “I know,” whispered aloud, two soft exhalations fluttering against him.

From inside her came the sound of his own twin hearts, fast and strong against her ear.  It expanded into a melody, a symphony accompanied by a swell of happiness and _love_ , so much it stole his breath.  Did she realise what she was broadcasting?

Her joy swirled around him in ecstatic tendrils of colour, wavering and dipping before they whipped into a tight spin and took to a cerulean skyscape in burst after burst of thousands of tiny glowing lights.

Maybe she did realise.

Maybe she did because oh, she was different, so _different_.  She was unlike anything he’d ever known, an expanse of undiscovered territory that stretched to the horizon in every dimension and sang with colour and light and ineffable harmonies suffused in a golden glow.

Unexpectedly, he also sensed _power_ there, down deep and latent.  It was just the slightest tingle of something important, _something_...

The ghost of a wolf howl called, so remote he was barely sure he’d heard.

Before he had time to consider it, her colours flared into the twilight of a rapidly setting sun.  Everything turned on its head as the world around him contracted into a pinpoint of red-tinted light in the darkness.

A brilliant flash shot through him.  Suddenly he was back on Krop Tor, seeing his own yellow helmet descend until it fell below her vision.  Memory.  She was showing him what she would not say as she watched him descend toward the planet’s core in that spindly swaying lift with Ida.  She’d been so afraid for him, and it churned and writhed inside her.  She’d been so determined not to let it show.  She believed in him, trusted him, yet he felt her ache in the pit of his own stomach, longing and dread solidifying there, weighing her down.

He exuded regret and apology, but that was not what she wanted.

 _No!_ she implored him. _No.  Not your fault._   _See.  Will you?  Need you.  Understand – please –_

She radiated solace and hope.  Compelled by the knowledge that he _could_ , now she seemed to _need_ him to relive this with her.  He caught an edge to her entreaty, as if she were overflowing and about to spill out into the sea.  Did she comprehend how intimate this was?  What they were doing, had done already, this touch of mind to mind – this was the act of lovers, of... bond-mates.  And Time Lords did not bond.  Time Lords did not love, not like this.

Except that he loved her _exactly_ like this, and how could he ever refuse her?

Silent assent – _yes_ – and he felt her tense slightly in his arms.

The darkness shifted and swirled, swept away on a motionless wind.  The sky reappeared, this time luminous and rolling.  With a booming _crack_ the heavens broke open and he braced himself as her experiences came hurtling toward him.

He thought he was prepared, but when the first whitecap broke against him, it was more intense than he ever expected.  She was such a powerful drug he almost forgot his own identity.

 _i’m sorry but he’s dead_ no NO anguish, crushing her chest _you don’t know him_ grief, stealing the air _how could i leave him_ – fighting overpowered blacking out – waking to roaring engines angry desperation raw and screaming _get me out take me back_ – despair hollowness the sight of the black hole as a malevolent omnipotent maw devouring the universe – it had _taken_ him from her _gone gone gone_ – rage burning toby zed _was it all for nothing_ a wall of red red breathing fire _go to hell!_ the beast with toby’s face surging out into blackness – thrusters lost pulled toward death calm emptiness strange serene sorrow yearning only for his arms around her –

And then it was over, all over the moment she heard his voice and pain vanished in the wake of shocked relief and love, _so much love_ – excruciating exquisite limitless love, infinite and unconditional.  It emanated from everywhere, everything that was her.  He saw his own face rushing closer, felt himself being hauled off the ground and kicking the air in triumph and sounding a clarion call through all of her was _so much so much love love you love you love you_ and as the memories came to an end he heard her repeating

_this – **this** – see **this**._

See this.

It took him a long time to come back to himself.  Slowly it all died away, azure sky returning then fading until only the love was left, pouring from her through every touch of her skin to his and back again, completing the circuit.

It was so difficult to tear himself away, and he had trouble untangling his own thoughts and emotions from hers.  Carefully he tugged on the strands of his own consciousness, separating them gently, stepping away and letting her hand fall from its perch on his skin until they were no longer touching.

Her fingers dropped and he was shuttered again into his own mind.  Alone.  The emptiness fell back into place like an iron door slamming shut, almost physically painful.  Yet she was still there, just an arm’s reach away, and abruptly the enormity of it all thundered down on him.  His gigantic non-stop gob and for all that he was speechless. 

Dumbstruck.  All he could do was stare at her owlishly. 

Breathless and flushed, she stared back at him.

Finally a measure of reality seeped through.  She began to fidget under the scrutiny of his gaze and ducked her head shyly.  He made a discontented noise and reached for her, and she burrowed into his shoulder with a watery laugh.  She wrapped herself around him fiercely, arms beneath his suit jacket and fingers gripping handfuls of his Oxford.

Trembling – she was _trembling_.  It was not easy to stop himself from barging back into her psyche uninvited, to soothe her and to claim the entire hypnotic vista he’d glimpsed there.  To think he had only been wading in the shallows just on the brink of her.  With effort he settled for smoothing his fingers along her back in soothing circles until she began to relax.

After an agonising 15.843 seconds she lifted her head, peering up at him through lashes dewy with unshed tears that made his hearts stutter.  But then she surprised him by laughing again, lilting and blurry with emotion.

Uncertain, his expression must have betrayed him, because she loosened her hold on him to reach up and run her fingers through his hair in a way that made him positively muzzy, her touch reassuring and achingly unguarded in a way she’d never have dared only moments before.  Again he had to fight the urge to fall back into her mind.

“Just…” she said, pulling back to make a vague motion with her hand.  “Been a long day, yeah?”

The offhand remark threw him out of his daze with a bark of laughter.  “I should think so, yes.”

“Too long,” she murmured, and his mirth ebbed away as he saw her fighting back more tears.  They came regardless, spilling over this time onto her cheeks, a thousand emotions mingling in the vortex of her eyes.

“Rose.”  He brushed the moisture away with his thumbs as his fingers moved tenderly along her jawline, and her face slowly crumpled into remembered grief.  Instinctively he pulled her back into him.

“I _saw_ it,” she breathed.  Her voice was a soft vibration against his chest.  “The planet, and the black hole, and – I saw it and I thought you were – ”

She faltered and he heard her throat constrict as she took a two-handed hold on the front of his jacket, bunching his lapels in her small fists.  “I _really thought_ – ”

“I know,” he whispered.  He could barely weather hearing the heartbreak in her voice as she struggled, tried and failed to finish the sentence he knew she was about to utter – _I really thought you were dead_.

 “I know,” he repeated softly.  “I’m sorry.”

“I tried,” she continued, “I tried to show you.  When you were _here_ , in my head just now, I wanted – I just _needed_ you to know, really _know_ this time.”  Her breath hitched.  “What if I’d lost you?  What if I’d lost you and I never said…”

“It’s alright,” he murmured.  “I know.  It’s over now.  We’re together.”

Her grip on his jacket eased.  A second passed.  It hit him then that he was sensing timelines in flux, reality groaning in fitful protest as old and familiar timelines grew tenuous and brittle.  Some snapped, popping and sizzling as new possibilities sprouted and crowded them out, growing into lush, intricate decision trees and elegant quantum probability waves.  SpaceTime was morphing erratically, the two of them the epicentre.  Perhaps that should have given him pause, but Time had always been in a curious state of disarray when it came to Rose.  He was far beyond anything but the honesty of what they were becoming and the acceptance of its importance, whatever it might bring.

The thought vanished as she lifted her head to look at him.  Her expression was no longer weighted by memory but held something else, something he couldn’t quite fathom until she repeated, “We’re _together_.”  The word was suddenly brand new when she spoke it.

He had to smile, broad and genuine and indescribably pleased.  “Yes.  Yes, we are,” he agreed.

“An’ this…” she continued, pulling a hand up to point back and forth between the two of them with an enigmatic half-smile, “this is…”  Her smile became brighter, less cryptic.  “ _New_.”

“Well…”  He bent down and brushed his lips against hers again, brief, sweet and close-mouthed, then moved away before she had time to react.  “This might be _new_ – ”  He did it once more, lingering only a fraction longer.  “ – but… but you must know by now that _wanting_ it is nothing new.”

He felt a shudder run through her, and when he moved forward a third time she was ready, meeting him halfway.  Relief poured in as they collided in the same tangle of emotion and passion, love and want and need and _her_ flooding him again.  It escalated even more quickly than before as he felt his body react to her enthusiastic response.  One of his hands pushed through the strands of her hair while the other toyed with the hem of her shirt, seeking out and finding the skin beneath it.  Her tongue slid along his, mapping him, learning him as he felt her tug at his layers then skim her fingers along his bare back.  He was overloading, set alight from the inside out, self-control rapidly slipping.  He needed to be nearer again, _needed_ her colours and sounds and thoughts and feelings surrounding him.  Needed _her_.

Too much – it was too much to resist.  She was so near and with only the slightest reach outward he found her and _oh this is dangerous dangerous dangerous_ …

Before he was even truly aware of trying, he was there.

 _Effortlessly_ he was there, so much deeper than before, where her heart of hearts was flung boundlessly open as if she’d been awaiting him.  Then he knew that she _had_ been waiting, only for him and for _so long_.  Everything he had ever called pain melted away and there was only now.  She was _now._  Temptation had him and he simply let go and fell, a fall awake with colour and music and vibrance and –

A low noise rippled from the back of her throat like a promise.

Without warning, her own golds and reds and pinks were grasping back at him, moving, following the strands of the link he had forged and meshing with them, weaving them together.  Suddenly she was _here_ as well as there.

Astonishment.  He froze.

She was _here_.

She was _here_ and she was _now._

Warmth joy completion _– beautiful, Doctor, you’re so –_

_Impossible!_

Her giggling rang through his brain like tingling butterfly kisses.   _Doctor, does that word mean what you think it does?_  

Combined with him, her presence in his own head was so much clearer, so focused, so _strong._   _How –_

That train of thought derailed completely as her fingernails scraped gently across his lower back and sent shivers and sparks along his spine.  In synch with her hands, her psyche skated the perimeter of his, feeling along edges and angles, massive defences he kept tightly sealed.  Her delicate fingers uncurled then, open palms pressed flat against his skin as well as the walls inside his mind.

She stilled, asking for no more, waiting for him.  He was aware of his own hands moving again, roaming more boldly to find uncharted paths along her body.  Shuddering, her arousal filled his senses.

Suddenly, it clicked.  Oh, he’d been so thick – he was in love with her, _in love with her_ , and how could it even be _possible_ to connect this way in body and _not_ in mind?  It was everything or nothing; Rassilon be damned, it was written into his very genetics.

Dipping his head, he kissed her again and was on the verge of giving in completely.

Then he heard it.

The song.

From the very centre of him, it rose up like a dazzling wave and rolled outward, intent on obliterating all he’d built so as to draw her in – to complete the connection they’d begun.  Unknowingly they’d gone too far and now it was out of his control, and alarms blasted and urgent warning flares flew up everywhere.  He knew it even as he yearned to let it happen because he wanted; he _wanted_.  He wanted her, _all_ of her, touch and breath and feel and laughter and love and _together_ and life and heat and taste and skin and forever _forever_.  He wanted to give her everything and to take anything she was willing to give – and now she’d shown him so much _more_.

But not – _never_ – without her consent.  She didn’t know, didn’t understand.  Even as he continued to kiss her, he gripped tightly to the frayed ends of his willpower.

_Rose, you have to stop._

The beautiful beautiful featherlight touch of her mind inside his faltered.  The wave, the song, the thirst for connection grew stronger, nearer its goal.

Her colours muted, dulled grey with confusion.  The sensation of her faded until she was lingering on the edge and it took all of his strength not to pull her back.

_I can’t let you in._

“But – but you _want_ to,” she murmured earnestly against his lips.  “I can _feel it_.”

Despite his fears – the fear he would dim her brilliance with the very weight of centuries of living; the fear she would not love him if she knew his faults and evils and the dark things he kept hidden – despite all of that, he couldn’t tell her anything but the truth even if he’d tried.

_Yes.  Oh, yes, I want._

He forgot himself again as he angled his head and began to trail his mouth along her jaw and down to the dip of her throat.  Desire and knowledge warred within him, and he couldn’t tear himself away from her.  He fought down panic as the wave sped closer, the song becoming louder and taking on colour and weight and form.

_Please, Rose, you don’t know!_

He mustered his strength and projected all of his knowledge, his urgency, hoping to get her to see what this was, to know that she couldn’t possibly want it too, that he would never let her tie herself to him unwillingly.

_Can you hear it?_

_Yes._ She made no move to leave.  If anything she drew closer, brighter, confounding him.

_Don’t you understand?  You can’t possibly want this._

Completely open, her emotions flowed over him and he sensed an undertone of sorrow, sorrow that he felt himself unworthy.  _To be with you?_ she countered.  _That’s all I’ve ever wanted._

He knew he was selfish, would take everything she gave, but he still managed one last protest.  _Not like this, Rose.  I can’t ask you for this._

Radiating love and certainty, her presence coalesced within him full force.

_But I can give it._

And she did.  She’d chosen him.  She’d chosen, and at that he was lost, they were both lost, together.  The wave was the song and the song was the wave as it crested and broke not with a crash but a noise like thousands of wind chimes.  The walls keeping her apart from him crumbled like sand castles beneath the overpowering sound and dissolved into vapour.

Her blinding gold rushed in from everywhere at once, filling him with a joy more powerful than he could ever have conceived.  Every dark corner of his consciousness burst into sunlight and bloomed red grass and roses and silver tipped trees.

His knees buckled.

 


End file.
